Abstract
Just one among many of the conundrums associated with the Northern Ireland question is the existence of an enduring democratic socialist tradition and a high level of workplace organisation, yet the failure of the labour and trade union movement to sustain an enduring and electorally successful party of labour. Sectarian division provides some part of the answer, but there are two other aspects which demand attention. First, why did the Northern Ireland Labour Party, which began to enjoy some ascendancy in the 1960s, not find itself in the vanguard of the Northern Ireland civil rights movement? Second, why did the British Labour Party provide so little succour to its Northern Ireland comrades in toil down through the years?
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Notes
The story of the labour movement in the North of Ireland during the first two decades of the century has been well documented. As well as numerous articles, see, for example, Geoffrey Bell, Troublesome Business (London: Pluto, 1982)
John Gray, City in Revolt (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1985)
Austen Morgan, Labour and Partition (London: Verso, 1991)
Henry Patterson, Class Conflict and Sectarianism (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1980).
There are numerous writings on Connolly; for an acerbic, revisionist view see Austen Morgan, James Connolly: A Political Biography (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988).
For Midgley’s story, see Graham Walker, The Politics of Frustration: Harry Midgley and the Failure of Labour in Northern Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985).
For a fuller account than that which follows of the fortunes of the NILP in the war years and after, see Terry Cradden, Trade Unionism, Socialism and Partition: The Labour Movement in Northern Ireland 1939–1953 (Belfast: December Publications, 1993).
See Bob Purdie, ‘The Friends of Ireland’, in T. Gallagher and J. O’Connell (eds), Contemporary Irish Studies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983).
See Bob Purdie, Politics in the Streets: The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1990).
C. E. B. Brett, Long Shadows Cast Before (Edinburgh: Bartholomew, 1978), p. 133.
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© 1996 The Institute of Contemporary British History
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Cradden, T. (1996). Labour in Britain and the Northern Ireland Labour Party, 1900–70. In: Catterall, P., McDougall, S. (eds) The Northern Ireland Question in British Politics. Contemporary History in Context Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24606-9_5
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